ACP 2017 - The Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences 2017

Conference Theme: “Identity: Personalising and Situating Psychology”
The study of Identity in Psychology was pioneered by Erik Erikson in his early work in the 1950s and 60s, such as Identity: Youth and Crisis, and Identity and the Life Cycle. He looked at three aspects of identity ? ego identity, personal identity and social identity. Developing a strong sense of ego identity, a coherent sense of who one is and isn’t, that is consistent and stable over time, is a key task in adolescence. Ego identity can also be equated with the personality level of identity. One’s personal identity is based on one’s abilities, one’s goals, and possibilities for the future and can be seen as the level of identity influenced most by one’s primary relationships, while one’s social identity is formed through identification with groups or secondary relationships, and shows one’s position within the social structure.
In most societies in the past, forming an identity ? a self-definition within a community ? was a straightforward process. People adopted roles that were already decided for them by their family and their community. In most modern global societies today the possibilities, choices and dilemmas young people face make this process of identity formation much less simple.
This partly explains the explosion of studies on Identity in Psychology, since Erikson’s day. This has happened within all areas of Psychology and has also incorporated theoretical ideas from Sociology. In one sense, this integration of the Identity or Self with diverse areas of Psychology ahs helped to personalize these areas of study by focusing on the whole person with their contradictions and complexities with specific contexts and relationships.